Times Quick Cryptic No 1579 by Hurley

Author   JohninterredPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

I took quite a bit longer than usual to complete this QC finishing in just under 7 minutes, but we’ve had quite a few head-scratchers already over the last 2 weeks, haven’t we?  I had a few hold-ups with this, such as failing for ages to see the answer to the anagram at 3D, remembering the word for the hairstyle at 14D, and bunging in the wrong answer at first for 20A. But there are plenty of straightforward clues to get you going, making this a fair challenge, I think. I liked the pun at 1A, the 4-part charade at 17A, the misdirection at 4D and, especially,  the topical instructions on how to do our enforced home-schooling at 17A and 17D. Thank-you Hurley. Lovely job, as they say round here. How did everyone else get on?

Definitions underlined in bold italics, (Abc)* indicating anagram of Abc, deletions and [] other indicators.

Across
1 Display cereal bowl (8)
BRANDISH – BRAN (cereal) DISH (bowl). An easy start for me – a similar clue appeared in the Guardian crossword on Tuesday.
5 Reportedly proper beef, say (4)
MEAT – Sounds like [reportedly] MEET (proper). The definition by example is indicated by the “say”.
9 Soldier’s brought back mother’s letter from Greece (5)
SIGMA – GI’S (soldier’s) [brought back] -> SIG, MA (mother).
10 I tear in to change passivity (7)
INERTIA – (I tear in)* [to change].
11 Uproar Northern Ireland daughter recalled (3)
DIN – N.I (Northern Ireland) D (daughter) reversed [recalled] -> DIN.
12 Love place to sleep niece arranged in dutifulness (9)
OBEDIENCE – O (looks like 0, love) BED (place to sleep) (niece)* [arranged].
13 Game — hit, we hear, Queen follows (6)
SOCCER – SOCC sounds like [we hear] SOCK (hit), ER (Queen).
15 Teacher from Michaelmas term (6)
MASTER – Hidden in [from] MichaelMAS TERm.
17 Strengthen Religious Education at home, supporting Church (9)
REINFORCE – RE (Religious Education) IN (at home) FOR (supporting) C.E. (Church of England).  A lovely 4 part charade with a neat surface which goes nicely with 17D, with churches being closed as well as schools.
19 First to return this container (3)
POT – TOP (first) [to return] -> POT.
20 Musical show after worry gets new ending (7)
CONCERT – CONCERn (worry) losing the last letter and getting a different one [gets new ending], in this case T. I thought this was a bit tricky for a quicky, but maybe I’m just a bit disgruntled that I spent time trying to find the name of a musical and wondering how CAMELOT could be the answer…. which, of course, it couldn’t!
21 Second girl for fish (5)
SKATE – S (second) KATE (girl). I read here they can grow to 285cm.

Image from thewebsiteofeverything.
22 Phone band (4)
RING – Double definition. And about as easy as they get!
23 Expanse of land with nice sylvan area originally included — do business (8)
TRANSACT – TRACT (expanse of land) with first letters of Nice Sylvan Area [originally] inside [included].
Down
1 We hear less important parts of pop singles, moreover (7)
BESIDES – Sounds like [we hear] B SIDES (less important parts of pop singles). Pop singles. Remember them?
2 Organ’s playing — a gas! (5)
ARGON – (Organ)* [‘s playing]. “Argon is a chemical element with the symbol Ar and atomic number 18. It is in group 18 of the periodic table and is a noble gas. Argon is the third-most abundant gas in the Earth’s atmosphere, at 0.934%“
3 Stall tags done, free to circulate (4,4,4)
DRAG ONES FEET – (tags done free)* [to circulate].
4 Beam: at first surveyor measures its length exactly (5)
SMILE – Initial letters of [at first] Surveyor Measures Its Length Exactly. Lovely surface playing on another meaning of “beam”.
6 Former money court — vanished (7)
EXTINCT – EX (former) TIN (money) CT (court).
7 Mock ultimately decadent leisure (5)
TEASE – Last letter of [ultimately] decadenT, EASE (leisure).
8 Derek briefly in charge at German city food shop (12)
DELICATESSEN – DEL (Derek, briefly) IC (in charge) AT, ESSEN (German city). The city, 9th largest in Germany, crops up quite often in crosswords featuring in other words like essence, essential, lessen, messenger, quintessential etc.
14 Hit on including good hairstyle (7)
CHIGNON – CHIN (hit on the chin) ON [including] G (good). I struggled to remember this word for a type of (hair) bun. Learn how to make one here. “Chin” is not the first word to come to my mind for “hit” either. Fun to get the “combination” with the intersecting 13A, though.
16 About-turn in relation to threat, not hard (7)
RETREAT – RE (in relation to) ThREAT without the H (hard) – [not hard].
17 Repeat section of core curriculum (5)
RECUR – Hidden in [section of] coRE CURriculum. The neat surface being an instruction on how to do our enforced home-schooling in these locked down times, perhaps?
18 Part of engine unaffected by reversal (5)
ROTOR – We need a palindrome [unaffected by reversal]. A bit of a chestnut, this.
19 Pal, jazzman, regularly seen in square (5)
PLAZA – Alternate letters [regularly seen] of PaL jAzZmAn.

32 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 1579 by Hurley”

  1. Biffed 8d, which was just begging to be biffed, and 14d, which I didn’t understand, although I inferred that CHIN=hit. MER at 1d; ‘B Side’ does not sound like ‘beside’. First time in a while that I got in under 6′, with 5:40.
  2. I wasted a lot of time not on CAMELOT but CABARET, which doesn’t work of course, but might have done. Also struggled to remember CHINGON. I had no idea Argon was so common (presumably it is third after Nitrogen and Oxygen). So I learned something today. MER at BESIDES but no doubt that it was the correct answer.
  3. 10 minutes but noting a number of difficult answers that I’d expect some less experienced solvers to struggle with.

    I relied solely on wordplay to come up with a candidate for the hairstyle,vaguely recognised CHIGNON when arrived at as a word I’d seen before but had no idea what it meant.

    Re vinyl’s comment on 5ac, I also knew ‘meet’ only from the congregation response but in our version, which I assume is from the Book of Common Prayer, the expression was: It is meet and right so to do.

    Edited at 2020-03-27 07:05 am (UTC)

  4. Just like yesterday I had one letter wrong -and I’m not happy about it. For 5a, my first thought was MEAT but I could not make that work with Proper. I then thought of the word we only see in crosswords NEAT; which is perfectly defined as Beef Say and could just about mean proper idiomatically -that’s neat, that’s proper. I will now try to remember Meet and Proper.
    Otherwise FOI was TEASE and LOI SOCCER. 13:45 on the clock when I got the Not Quite Right message. David
  5. I found this at the easier end of the spectrum with my only real sticking points being untangling the anagram at 3d and not having heard of MEET, so 5a went in with a shrug. BESIDES made me chuckle, even if it’s not that convincing as a homophone, but my favourite was 8d. Finished in 8.41 with LOI MEAT.
    Thanks to johninterred.
  6. Neat, fun puzzle with lots of clever clues and one brutal obscurity in CHIGNON. Ouch! Chinned me, anyway. And I was another who tried very hard to make CABERET work, so that little pair chewed up a lot of time. But still, all done and parsed in 1.5K for a Very Good Day. COD to BESIDES, which made me chuckle.

    Thanks Hurley and John.

    Templar

  7. I found some of this easy and some more tricky, with the NW holding me up longest. Took me far too long to see DRAG ONES FEET. No trouble with MEAT. In the RC tradation we used to chant “It is meet and just.” Anyway I finished up just exceeding my target at 10:48. Thanks Hurley and John.

    Edited at 2020-03-27 09:09 am (UTC)

  8. I’ve only just started doing the QC regularly in the last few days as isolation kicks in. I thought this was mostly very easy but I ground to a halt with 3 missing. I then had to switch brain modes to tease out SOCCER, CHIGNON and CONCERT. Like others I struggled to alight on the correct word for HIT in each case and wasn’t terribly familiar with the hairstyle. For all I know I might have a chignon by the time the hair clippers I ordered today arrive some time in May.

    9:01. Like John I also wasted time trying to justify CAMELOT.

  9. I enjoyed this. I shared my 3 LOsI with penfold. I liked BRANDISH and BESIDES. As the first of the slower solvers, I was 5 Mins over my target. Note: it took only 10 mins more to complete yesterday’s 15×15 which was a doddle (apart from ESCHEWAL) – thanks to yesterday’s bloggers for the tip. Thanks to Hurley and John. John M.

    Edited at 2020-03-27 03:56 pm (UTC)

  10. A bit slow this morning, stopping the Rotterometer at 18 minutes. LOI was SKATE for no accountable reason – I got fixated on the fish being part of the wordplay instead of the definition, and couldn’t get SHAKE out of my head. CHIGNON also delayed me slightly, but was vaguely remembered in the end and fitted the wordplay perfectly, so went in. Thanks John and Hurley.
  11. … to do and I finished in half an hour. Spent too long convinced it was cabaret, not the only one…
    Tks everyone.
    Diana
  12. 30 minutes, ten over my target, but I spent most of the last ten on TEASE and CONCERT. I DNK CHIGNON but I had come across ‘chin’ for ‘hit’ before. Most of the rest were ‘difficult but enjoyable’, unlike yesterday’s horror!

    Brian

    Edited at 2020-03-27 10:34 am (UTC)

  13. For the first time in a while, came in around 25 mins. Had a to take a guess on “Chignon” being correct (as I hadn’t heard of it), but once I had a few checkers worked it out from the parsing.

    Overall, I thought it was on the easier side compared to some we’ve had recently – but maybe I was just on the right wavelength.

    Never happy about “soccer” being used – but that’s just me.

    FOI – 4dn “Smile”
    LOI – 14dn “Chignon”
    COD – 1dn “Besides”

    Thanks as usual.

  14. ….and managed to dodge all the biff traps presented by “Cabaret”, “shake” and “shine”.

    I’ve seen CHIGNON in a crossword fairly recently, but can’t remember where.

    I’ll turn a blindish eye to the dodgy homophone BESIDES, as it made me smile. I shall visit YouTube later to look for a few gems such as “They Remind Me Too Much of You” by Elvis, “Once Upon a Time” by Dusty, and “Holy Mackerel” by Little Richard.

    Currently 12th on the leader board.

    FOI SIGMA
    LOI MEAT
    COD BRANDISH

  15. I only know chignon as a band from one of the Tarantino films. Wanted to put it in regardless as the wordplay looked right but couldn’t reconcile with cabaret. Which was, of course, wrong. DNF.
  16. … It took a bit of digging! I didn’t help myself by getting fixated by the word “racket ” for 13 across – hopeless! Some great clues here, I thought. Unlike some, more experienced solvers here, I liked 1 down and thought it clever. I also liked 1 across. Thanks very much, blogger and setter.
  17. Yay! Finished.
    Audrey Hepburn used to wear her hair in a chignon. Actually so did I sometimes, back in the day.
    Just means up in a roll, as far as I remember. Makes a change to have a girly clue as opposed to cricket and snooker!
  18. I couldn’t initially see the answers for either 1ac or 1d, and then wasted a few minutes trying to work out the anagram at 3d before I had any checkers. Fortunately a BCP upbringing allowed a start with 5ac, Meat, and 8d Delicatessen virtually jumped off the page. After that, it was a steady solve, finishing almost bang on 20mins with the Soccer/Chignon pair. So, overall not too difficult – providing you have done a few of these before. Invariant
  19. A lovely end to the week and successfully home in 1.6K. FOI INERTIA and LOI TEASE. I biffed DRAG ONES FEET once the checkers were in place and dithered over meet = proper but submitted anyway to avoid a third DNF this week. Thanks Hurley and John.
  20. This went smoothly until I got stuck on the same three clues as several others in the SW. With 20a I was thinking of CARE and the musical Carousel which was clearly not going to fit. I wouldn’t have thought of ‘chin’ as ‘hit’ and strangely I didn’t know Del was an abbreviation for Derek. I finished in 20 minutes which is a Good Day for me at the end of a Good Week. Thank you Hurley and John.
    Blue Stocking
  21. There’s been a run of trickier puzzles by my reckoning, and today was no exception. 11:23. I enjoyed CHIGNON and BESIDES.
      1. I think some of the setters are looking for a compliment from the expert solvers, rather than striving to ensure that the crossword is of a fair standard for the SCC.
        However, for the first time in over a week, I found this do-able and enjoyable.
        Sal
  22. A Fairly Good Day – in under my par which seems to be about 12 minutes. I did this hours ago so have forgotten the details now!

    I know it took a little while to warm up but once I got going, everything went in quite smoothly, until I reached 21a. So many girls’ names, so few actually make a type of fish after S! And we’ve seen similar cluing before – nevertheless the skate was very elusive.

    All the same, an enjoyable puzzle – thanks Hurley, and thanks John for the blog.

    FOI Sigma
    LOI Skate
    COD Besides
    Time A whisper over 10 minutes

    On edit: have just taken some fish out of the freezer for supper – it’s hake!!

    Edited at 2020-03-27 06:34 pm (UTC)

  23. My favourite. Our fish van came this week and they were 12 inches across creating frying pan and plate problems.
    Same problems as others today in what was otherwise straightforward but chewy.
    However. How does ease = leisure ? My leisure time today was jet washing the patio. Thx Covid. Johnny
  24. Busy day at the office so did this at midnight, and finished just under a quarter of an hour later.

    FOI 2dn ARGON

    LOI 7dn TEASE

    COD 1dn BESIDES

    WOD CHIGNON which I vaguely remembered and ‘Work-a-day-chic, which amounted to the same thing.

  25. The last two days have taken me an hour altogether! This one was 28m with two red squares for NEAT and TIP. TIP was careless, only had to trawl one more vowel to get a better answer and NEAT because I have finally learned it can mean cattle, so annoying to still be undone by another unknown in MEET for proper. I did consider MEET but it made no sense to me. Also not heard of CHIGNON. Frustrating because the grid was nice and full after the first pass of acrosses and downs. A week of good puzzles in the QC but I would like an easier day soon!

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